Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. ~ The Buddha
Three Questions, March 4th, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Saw my first image from Fire Fly’s Blue Ghost probe that just landed on the moon. A sunrise if you will, of our star over the moon.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned that my favorite expression, “logic has no place in education,” is far more accurate than I wish it was.
What made me happy today?
I’m having to be super careful on my blood sugar right now in preparing for my surgery. But today I allowed myself a half a Coke and it was glorious.
You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when its waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye. ~ Hunter S Thompson
Three Questions, March 3, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Over the last couple of days I watched one of my favorite all-time movies. The most beautiful thing I encountered today was the 1953 version of the War of the Worlds. It’s a really beautiful film, good story, decent effects for the 50’s as long as you ignore the ridiculous alien, even though I really like it.
What did I learn today?
I learned about a new critter today, a blue hairy frogfish, it’s truly a magnificently ugly fish, so much so I think it’s absolutely beautiful.
What made me happy today?
What made me happy today was an idea for a film. I think there needs to be an animated film that would essentially be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but really playing to hard core book fans and in every scene, somewhere in the background there should be a reference to Alice in Wonderland.
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. ~ William Morris
Happiness Basics
The world is a crazy place in the best of times, and we are certainly not in the best of times right now. In many, many ways the world seems to have lost it’s bloody mind. This leads to all of us, who already have very busy and somewhat crazy lives, to be even more crazy. As we experience stress and anxiety in our lives it often takes a toll on our overall happiness.
It’s during these times that I am always reminded of some basic Taoist philosophy about life and happiness. It’s something I’ve talked about before on the blog and something that I have come back to time and time again in my life and it’s always been very helpful. So I thought tonight, with everything that’s happening, it would be a good time for a reminder about this simple philosophy.
Taoist philosophy says that whenever you feel out of sorts you have to make sure that all of the basic necessities of life are being taken care of. It is important that you are eating right, drinking enough water, exercising, sleeping enough and that finally that your environment is safe. When I get out of sorts the two things that fall apart on me the quickest are me eating healthily and getting proper sleep. I have a tendency to fall back on comfort foods, chocolate and cokes. While these make me feel good in the moment, the additional carbs are a problem for me. First, as a diabetic it’s not good for my system, and secondly, when my sugar numbers go up I have to urinate more frequently. Which of course means that I sleep in two hour snippets at best, so I don’t get enough sleep. The one thing I’m always good at is drinking enough water.
The one characteristic that is the most complicated is the idea of a safe environment. This doesn’t just mean safe from physical harm, but it also means safe from mental injury as well. This means if you are in a work or home environment where you don’t feel safe and supported, are under great stress or even threat of physical or emotional attack you can’t be happy, safe or secure. The fact is, that even if everything else is in balance, if you don’t feel safe, you won’t be right. This can be really challenging when the safety of your environment is beyond your control, meaning you can’t leave the situation that’s causing you not to be safe.
So my friends, remember these basics, and even if you’re in a situation you can’t change, if you at least keep the other aspects in balance, you might at least have the emotional and mental reserves to deal with the safety issue while you find a solution. So take care of yourself, get the basics and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
There was a picture that accompanied a description of the basic physics of waves. It was a gorgeous shot of a massive wave catching the sun twinkling off of the edge of the wave, truly beautiful.
What did I learn today?
What I learned today is that there will be both a partial solar and a total lunar eclipse this year and both viewable from North America. And the lunar eclipse, a blood moon will happen on the evening of March 14th.
What made me happy today?
My niece posted pictures on her Instagram account today of her latest basketball game. Made me happy to see her happy and competing, and she looks and reminds me so much of her mother at the same age.
It doesn’t even matter if I don’t win a self-gold – after every meet, I have pizza. Pepperoni pizza.~ Simone Biles
Three Questions, March 1, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Saw some gorgeous flowers on my walk in San Francisco today.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned about fallstreak holes in clouds. They occur when ice crystals form from super cooled rain droplets that fall through altostratus or cirrostratus clouds as the droplets trigger a chain reaction of freezing.
What made me happy today?
I really great slice of pepperoni pizza is the easiest way to make me happy and had a lovely one from Gioia Pizzeria today.
We all need to make time for a burger once in a while. ~ Erica Durance
Three Questions, February 28, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
When I was out for my walk I saw some lovely flowers that were hanging in a bunch. They were absolutely beautiful.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges will be making an appearance and doing a question and answer session near my house after a screening of The Big Lebowski, it is of course on 4/20, which means I’ll be in the hospital recovering form my open heart surgery. I’m crushed, and for just a minute, I considered moving my surgery date.
What made me happy today?
Preparing for my surgery I need to have my blood sugar in really good shape so I’ve become a bit militant on the sugar front. I allowed myself a burger and small coke for dinner tonight and damn it was good and made me very happy.
Cooking is a philosophy, not a recipe. ~ Marco Pierre White
Three Questions, February 27, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
A lovely rose on my walk was definitely the most beautiful thing I encountered today.
What did I learn today?
I learned that the longest recorded instance of someone surviving without food or water was a guy in Australia who was put in a jail cell and forgotten for 18 days. Completely amazing, typically 3-5 days is the max without water.
What made me happy today?
For the last couple of days I’ve been jonesing for baked tofu. There’s a dish bean curd country style, essentially baked tofu and vegetables that I really wanted. And today after work I bought all the ingredients, baked up some tofu and was really happy at dinner.
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Today it was the heat, we had a ten degree above average today and it was absolutely gorgeous.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned that a lot of states have filial laws that say if your parents are indigent or can’t afford say nursing home care, you are required as their child to pay for it if you are able.
What made me happy today?
I had a colleague read a letter they had written thanking me for the impact I’ve had on their life. It was very moving and made me happy to have been a positive influence.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. ~ Oscar Wilde
Three Questions, February 25, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
There were some really amazing flowers on my walk today. And there were these bushes that were full of blue flowers that smelled absolutely amazing.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned about all of the tests that need to happen before my heart surgery and that the criteria for getting out of the hospital will be the ability to comfortably walk at least 200 feet.
What made me happy today?
Actually a lot. First I scheduled the date for my open heart surgery, tax day, April 15th, so I hope my surgeon had a good tax year. I also had a lovely pizza for dinner and finally, I ran into one of my old students today and it was wonderful.
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Saw some really amazing close up shots of birds online today, it’s a really different perspective to see something like a cardinal close up.
What did I learn today?
Today I read about the Athena mission heading to the moon. A really cool unmanned mission that will use a number of different components include the hopper (named after Grace Hopper), a rover and a drill to find and analyze freshwater on the moon.
What made me happy today?
I suffered through three weeks of having my entire schedule disrupted and forcing me to get up early every day and it was incredibly inconvenient. Well today, I got to use the new washer and dryer they installed in my apartment while finally being able to have a work from home day.
